Which shortage came first: the chicks or the eggs? Spooked by a huge spike in egg prices, some consumers are taking steps to secure their own future supply. Demand for chicks that will grow into egg-laying chickens — which jumped at the onset of the global pandemic in 2020 — is rapid again as the … Read more
The nation’s demand for labor only got stronger in December, the Labor Department reported on Wednesday, as job openings rose slightly to 11 million. That brings the number of posted jobs per available unemployed worker, which had been easing in recent months, back up to 1.9 — not what the Federal Reserve has been hoping … Read more
Federal Reserve officials are expected to raise interest rates by a quarter point on Wednesday, the latest step in their battle against rapid inflation. But what they signal about their next moves will be even more important than their actual decision this week. The Fed will release its January policy statement at 2 p.m. in … Read more
Officials from the United States and India agreed on Tuesday to expand cooperation on advanced weaponry, supercomputing, semiconductors and other high-tech fields, as the Biden administration looks to strengthen its connections with Asian allies and offset China’s dominance of cutting-edge technologies. The agreements followed two days of high-level meetings in Washington between government officials and … Read more
Amazon violated labor law in advance of unionization elections last year at two warehouses on Staten Island, a federal administrative judge has ruled. The judge, who hears cases for the National Labor Relations Board, ruled on Monday that Amazon supervisors had illegally threatened to withhold wage and benefit increases from employees at the warehouses if … Read more
A measure of pay and benefits that the Federal Reserve has been watching closely amid a strong labor market rose less than expected at the end of 2022, fresh data showed Tuesday. The Employment Cost Index climbed 1 percent in the final quarter of 2022 versus the prior three months, more slowly than the 1.1 … Read more
WASHINGTON — A strange thing happened with smartphones in Armenia last summer. Shipments from other parts of the world into the tiny former Soviet republic began to balloon to more than 10 times the value of phone imports in previous months. At the same time, Armenia recorded an explosion in its exports of smartphones to … Read more
WASHINGTON — The International Monetary Fund said on Monday that the global economy was expected to slow this year as central banks continued to raise interest rates to tame inflation, but it also suggested that growth would be more resilient than previously anticipated and that a global recession would probably be avoided. The I.M.F. upgraded its economic … Read more